"We see the most striking example of humility in the lamb which will submit to any animal; and when they are given for food to imprisoned lions they are as gentle to them as to their own mother, so that very often it has been seen that the lions forbear to kill them." -Leonardo da Vinci

"The living knew themselves just sentient puppets on God's stage" -T.E. Lawrence

"When once you have tasted flight, you will forever walk the earth with your eyes turned skyward, for there you have been and there you will always long to return." -Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519)

"Don't tell me sky's the limit when I know there are footprints on the moon." -Anonymous

Judy Resnik

"I think I'm where I am because I just happened to make the right decisions at the times when the decisions were presented to me." -Judy Resnik

Betty Resnik, her stepmom said after judy got accepted at nasa, "She became a different person. she loves it there. Now she is with people who are all bright, all achevers like herself."

Time magazine said Judy Resnik was "the most doggedly determined astronaut, male or female, ever to suit up."

Thanks, Bernstein/Blue, authors of Judith Resnik: Challenger Astronaut

"It has been my observation that the happiest of people, the vibrant doers of the world are almost always those who are using - who are putting into play, calling upon, depending upon-the greatest number of their God-given talents and capabilities. For them, curiosity is a way of life, and the quest for knowledge and the new is insatiable and exhilarating. " -John Glenn, astronaut & senator

"Understanding reflects a structured pattern of inquiry, and over the course of history there exists a genetic intelligibility to the sequences of questions raised for understanding." -James R. Pambrun

"Understanding reflects a structured pattern of inquiry, and over the course of history there exists a genetic intelligibility to the sequences of questions raised for understanding." -James R. Pambrun

"I think something is only dangerous if you are not prepared for it, or if you don't have control over it or if you can't think through how to get yourself out of a problem." -Judith Resnik

"We are more than what we do...
much more than what we accomplish...
far more than what we possess." -William Arthur Ward

"Our greatest fear is not that we are inadequate, but that we are powerful beyond measure.

It is our light, not our darkness, that frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, handsome, talented and fabulous?

Actually, who are you not to be?

You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We were born to make manifest the glory of God within us. It is not just in some; it is in everyone. And, as we let our own light shine, we consciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our fear, our presence automatically liberates others." -Nelson Mandela

"TRUTH is within ourselves; it takes no rise

From outward things, whate’er you may believe.
There is an inmost centre in us all,
Where truth abides in fullness; and around,
Wall upon wall, the gross flesh hems it in,

This perfect, clear perception—which is truth.
A baffling and perverting carnal mesh
Binds it, and makes all error: and, to KNOW,
Rather consists in opening out a way
Whence the imprisoned splendour may escape,

Than in effecting entry for a light
Supposed to be without." -Paracelsus

"The things to do are: the things that need doing: that you see need to be done, and that no one else eems to see need to be done. Then you will conceive your own way of doing that which needs to be done - that no one else has told you to do or how to do it. This will bring out the real you that often gets uried inside a character that has acquired a superficial array of behaviors induced or imposed by others on the individual." -R. Buckminster Fuller

"The Path that God takes when He wants to remain anonymous." -Albert Einstein

"If people let government decide which foods they eat and medicines they take, their bodies will soon be in as sorry a state as are the souls of those who live under tyranny." -Thomas Jefferson

"Fuddrucker you!"
"Oh, shiitake! I funcked up!"
"You Shiite! Go to the Fockers!"
"Dick Shittake, the next vice president"
"Watch out for the Shiitake Moslemmings!"
"Oh, this is so fuddrucked up"
"fuddruck-up"

-Jason C. Lamberton, from a piece of paper with his markings on it that formed these words you see now.

"Nothing is too wonderful to be true, if it be consistent with the laws of nature, and in such things as these, experiment is the best test of such consistency." -Michael Faraday

"A room without books is like a body without soul." -Marcus Tullius Cicero 106-43 B.C

"An inventor is simply a fellow who doesn't take his education too seriously." -Charles F. Kettering

"...and once you have tasted flight you will walk the earth with your eyes turned skyward,
for there you have been and there you long to return."
-- Leonardo da Vinci

"It is not uncommon for engineers to accept the reality of phenomena that are not yet understood, as it is very common for physicists to disbelieve the reality of phenomena that seem to contradict contemporary beliefs of physics" - H. Bauer

Quotes from Christian W. (thanks!)

"The reason people find it so hard to be happy is that they always see the past better than it was, the present worse than it is, and the future less resolved than it will be." --- Marcel Pagnol, French Writer (1895-1974)

-- Don't take life too serious. You'll never escape it anyway. ---Elbert Hubbard

"Our business is to present that which is timeless in the particular language of our own age. The bad preacher does exactly the opposite: he takes the ideas of our own age and tricks them out in the traditional language of Christianity. Your teaching must be timeless at its heart and wear a modern dress." -C. S. Lewis

Heraclitus of Ephesus

"Everything flows, nothing stands still"

"By cosmic rule, as day yields night, so winter summer, war peace, plenty famine. All things change. Fire penetrates the lump of myrrh, until the joining bodies die and rise again in smoke called incence."

"Men do not know how that which is drawn in different directions harmonises with itself. The harmonious structure of the world depends upon opposite tension like that of the bow and the lyre."

"By cosmic rule, as day yields night, so winter summer, war peace, plenty famine. All things change. Fire penetrates the lump of myrrh, until the joining bodies die and rise again in smoke called incence."

"Men do not know how that which is drawn in different directions harmonises with itself. The harmonious structure of the world depends upon opposite tension like that of the bow and the lyre."

"I am as I am not,"

"He who hears not me but the logos will say: All is one." -Heralitcus, 535-475 BC (Thanks, wikipedia)

An intelligent deaf-mute is better than an ignorant person who can speak. -Arabic proverb

He that receiveth a prophet in the name of a prophet shall receive a prophet's reward; and he that receiveth a righteous man in the name of a righteous man shall receive a righteous man's reward. -Matt 10:41

Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword. -Matthew 10:34

From World Mysteries.com

"Believe nothing, no matter where you read it, or who said it, no matter if I have said it, unless it agrees with your own reason and your own common sense." -Buddha (563BC-483BC)

"There must be no barriers to freedom of inquiry. There is no place for dogma in science. The scientist is free, and must be free to ask any question, to doubt any assertion, to seek for any evidence, to correct any errors." -J. Robert Oppenheimer, quoted in Life, October 10, 1949

"The human mind is not capable of grasping the Universe. We are like a little child entering a huge library. The walls are covered to the ceilings with books in many different tongues. The child knows that someone must have written these books. It does not know who or how. It does not understand the languages in which they are written. But the child notes a definite plan in the arrangement of the books - a mysterious order which it does not comprehend, but only dimly suspects." -Albert Einstein

"In questions of science the authority of a thousand is not worth the humble reasoning of a single individual."
"I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use." -Galileo Galilei

"What is p?"
A mathematician: "p is the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter."
A computer programmer: "p is 3.141592653589 in double precision."
A physicist: "p is 3.14159 plus or minus 0.000005."
An engineer: "p is about 22/7."
A nutritionist: "Pie is a healthy and delicious dessert!"

http://www.world-mysteries.com/sci.htm

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia: "-I consider all of the four Gospels thoroughly true, for in them, there is a reflection effective of a dignity that radiated from the Christ, and which is of such a divine nature as ever appeared.

-Things that matter most must never be at the mercy of things that matter least.

-You must be either the servant or the master, the hammer or the anvil.

-Know thyself? If I knew myself, I'd run away.

-When ideas fail, words come in very handy.

-Men err as long as they strive.

-There are two things children should get from their parents: roots and wings.

-Everything is simpler than you think and at the same time more complex than you imagine.

-We are shaped and fashioned by what we love.

-Willing is not enough; we must do.

-The masses fear the intellectual, but it is stupidity that they should fear; if they only realized how dangerous it really is. "

"One other thing that always burns me about this debate:

Deafness is a disadvantage. I don't care if you use the word disability or "differently abled" or what have you: People who can hear can do *everything* deaf people can, PLUS they can hear. That's not open for debate, it's simple logic. Yes, Beethoven made better music than I ever could, but that doesn't change the general rule or the simple logic of the situation.

If you have kids and intentionally try and make them deaf, you are denying them a talent they may help them in life. Great example: You may not care about music, but lots of people make a great living at it - but to think the next Beethoven or even the next Kurt Cobain is never going to make music because his/her selfish parents wanted their child to be just like they were, and were thinking of themselves, not their child's interests. Think of that "Deaf"ies: Your child might have been a millionaire with hearing, but you'll never know, will you?" -factusnonverbus

"Why would it be so bad if Deaf culture were obliterated because there were no more deaf people (through cures for deafness, not genocide of course)? The culture exists as a means to allow Deaf people to thrive despite their lack of hearing. If they had hearing, there would be no need for the underlying culture protecting them.

Prisoners, Lepers, aids patients, child abuse survivors and so forth all too can claim a legitimate culture to their affliction. While I see the value in the culture allowing people to deal with their disabilities or other problems, I don't think the culture is itself a valid justification the continued existence of the underlying problem. Wouldn't you like to live in a world without criminals and AIDs? Aren't you glad we don't have any more leper colonies these days?

I guess I'm asking: If we had a way to perfectly provide hearing to all children born deaf, why shouldn't we do it? What advantage is there to the world, or to the children in quesion in going through a life without hearing?

I can understand having grown up this way, being unwilling to make the switch, but it really bugs me when deaf parents make that choice for their children: I don't believe any parent has the right to make a choice like that on behalf of another person." -factusonverbus

"nothing...nothing can prepare for the absolute horror you feel when you hear the sound of angry deaf protestors...
It is the indecipherable howl of the most wicked Satan." -fiftyfootant

"It is as though Nature must needs make men narrow in order to give them force."

"the way to truth and right lies in straightforward honesty, not in indiscriminate flattery"

-W.E.B. duBois

"Few people can see genius in someone who has offended them." -Robertson Davies (thanks, Ridor)

Cycles of history

"We learned from history that we do not learn from history"- G.W.F. Hegel

Statistics galore

"There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics." -Benjamin Disraeli

"Statistical thinking will one day be as necessary for efficient citizenship as the ability to read and write." -H.G. Wells

"Round numbers are always false." -Samuel Johnson

"Getting an idea should be like sitting on a tack. It should make you jump up and want to do something." -E.L. Simpson

"The future belongs to those who believe in their dreams." -Eleanor Roosevelt

"It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education." -Albert Einstein

"A civilization that feels guilty for everything it is and does will lack the energy and conviction to defend itself." -Jean Francois Revel

"My object in life is to dethrone God and destroy capitalism." -Karl Marx

"One is not born a genius, one becomes a genius" -Simone de Beauvoir

Random quotes

"The best way to predict the future is to invent it." -Alan Kay

"Imagination rules the world." -Napoleon Bonaparte

"Coming together is a beginning,
Keeping together is progress,
Working together is success" -Henry Ford

"When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro." - Hunter S. Thompson

Goethe's problem

I have a solution for one of Goethe's problems, 195 years after the publication of his book, Theory of Colours. It is sign language! Read on.

"We never sufficiently reflect that a language, strictly speaking, can only be symbolical and figurative, that it can never express things directly, but only, as it were, reflectedly. This is especially the case in speaking of qualities which are only imperfectly presented to observation, which might rather be called powers than objects, and which are ever in movement throughout nature. They are not to be arrested, and yet we find it necessary to describe them; hence we look for all kinds of formulae in order, figuratively at least, to define them.

"Metaphysical formulae have breadth as well as depth, but on this very account they require a corresponding import; the danger here is vagueness. mathematical expressions may in many cases be vey conveniently and happily employed, but there is always an inflexibility in them, and we presently feel their inadequacy; for even in elementary cases we are very soon conscious of an incommensurable idea; they are besides, only intelligble to those who are especially conversant in the sciences to which much formulae are appropriated. The terms of the science of mechanics are more adderessed to the ordinary mind, but they are ordinary in other senses, and always have something unpolished; they destroy the inward life to offer from without an insufficient subsitute for it. [personal note: this must refer to the aether, which Newtonian dynamics say don't exist. ha-ha, some sense of humor here, "without an insufficient subsitute "-jcl] The formulae of the corpscular theories are nearly allied to the last; [Newtonian particles deny the existence of the aether -jcl] through them the mutable becomes rigid, description and expression uncouth: while, again, moral terms, which undoubtedly can express nicer relations, have the effect of mere symbols in the end, and are in danger of being lost in a play of wit.

"If, however, a writer could use all these modes of description and expression with perfect command, and thus give forth the result of his observations on the phenomena of nature in a diversified language; if he could preserve himself from predilections, stil embodying a lively meaning in as animated an expression, we might look for much instruction communicated in the most agreeable of forms.

"Yet, how difficult it is to avoid subsituting the sign for the thing; how difficult to keep the essential quality wtill living before us, and not to kill it with the word. With all this, we are exposed in modern times to a still greater danger by adopting expressions and terminologies from all branches of knowledge and science to embody our views of simple nature. Astronomy, cosmology, geology, natural history, nay religion and mysticism, are called in our aid; and how often do we not find a general idea and an elementary state rather hidden and obscured than elucidated and brought nearer to us by the employment of terms, the application of which is strictly specific and secondary. We are quite aware of the necessity which led to the introduction and general adoption of such a language, we also know that it has become in a certain sense indispensable; but it is only a moderate, unpretending recourse to it, with an internal conviction of its fitness, that can recommend it. " -Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Know what: I could express what Goethe so eloquently said in words just as eloquently in ASL, in much fewer words, saving energy! And be understood. As soon as we are able to detect sign language movements via brain waves, we will be the first telepathic people! Add that with transcranial magnetic simulation, with neurosuppressors (to suppress involuntary signing while brain download of sign language images via TMS), we can literally mentally send images of knowledge. This is the key to enlightenment.

With the first successful use of prosthetic limbs manipulated solely by brain waves, what I have been saying would happen is now reality. LITERALLY. If I am hooked up to that computer, I would be moving a fake arm, hand and fingers! Combine that with sign language recognition, the possibilities this brings up is overwhelming. I wonder what would happen if we rebroadcast these brain waves into another person's brain? Probalby need identical twins for initial experiments.

More Goethe Genius.

A few selections from Theory of Colours, published in 1810.

"...if the principles before alluded to are kept in view, it must be apparent that a distinct style of colour may be adopted on safe grounds for every subject. The application requires, it is true, infinite modifications, which can only succeed in the hands of genius. "-Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

"If the word tone, rather than tune, is to be still borrowed in future from music, and applied to colouring, it might be used in a better sense than heretofore." -Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, 1810.

"For it would not be unreasonable to compare a painting of powerful effect, with a piece of music in a sharp key; a painting of soft effect with a piece of music in a flat key, while other equivalents might be found for the modifications of these two leading modes." -Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

The word tone has hiterho understood to mean a veil of a particular colour spread over the whole picture; it was generally yellow, for the painter instinctively pushed the effect towards the powerful side." -Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

"...if we look through the history of science in general, especially the history of physics, we shall find that many important acquistions have been made by single inquirers, in single departments, and very often by unprofessional observers." -Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

"To whatever direction a man may be determined by inclination or by accident, whatever class of phenomena especially strike himm excite his interest, fix his attention, and occupy him, the result will still be for the advantage of science: for every new relation that comes to light, every new mode of investigation, even the imperfect attempt, even error itself is available; it may stimulate other observers and is never without as influencing future inquiry. " -Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

"Could some investigator rightly adopt the method in which we have connected the doctrine of colours with natural philosophy generally, and happily supply whath as escaped or been missed by us, the theory of sound, we are perusaded, might be perfectly connected with general physics: at present it stands, as it were, isolated within the circle of science." -Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

"Music is a means of communicating human feelings and ideas from composers and performers to an audience. It is a language, or we might say a set of languages, that allows us to communicate emotions ranging from humor to sorrow. Machines can amplify our ability to communicate musically by providing richer palettes of sounds and means of manipulating and controlling them." -Ray Kurzweil

"It isn't the people who are the smartest who get through this. I know because I'm not an 'A' student. It's the people who want it the most." -M. Gayle Crowder, a 55-year old recent graduate of college who took seven years to complete a 2-year program.

"I decided to drop out [from college] and trust that it would all work out OK. It was pretty scary at the time, but looking back it was one of the best decisions I ever made." -Steve Jobs

"You can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something--your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life." -Steve Jobs

"Getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me... It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life." -Steve Jobs

"No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don't want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it.

And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life's change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true.

"Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma--which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of other's opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary." -Steve Jobs

"Generally, disabilities such as blindness, deafness, and parapelgia are not noticeable and are not regarded as significant." -Ray Kurzweil

"Tact is the knack of making a point without making an enemy." -Isaac Newton

"I do not know what I may appear to the world; but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the seashore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me." -Isaac Newton

Did blind chance know that there was light and what was its refraction, and fit the eyes of all creatures after the most curious manner to make use of it? These and other suchlike considerations, always have, and always will prevail with mankind, to believe that there is a Being who made all things, who has all things in his power, and who is therefore to be feared." -Isaac Newton

"Quantum particles are the dreams that stuff is made of." -David Moser

O' brilliant genius!

"Mr. [J.P.] Morgan, what I contemplate and what I can certainly accomplish is not a single transmission of messages without wires to great distances; it is the transformation of the entire globe into a sentient being, as it were, which can feel in all its parts and through which thought may be flashed as ththrough a brain. From one single plant thousands of trillions if instruments could be operated, each costing no more than a few dollars, and situated in all parts of the globe. Will you help me or let my great work- almost complete- go to pot?" -Nikola Tesla, 1903

"When wireless is perfectly applied the whole earth will be converted into a huge brain, which in fact it is, as all being particles of a real and rhythmic whole. We shall be able to communicate with one other instantly, irrespective to distance. Not only this, but though television and telephone we shall see and hear one other as perfectly as though we were face to face." -Nikola Tesla, 1900

"Evolution has been seen as a billion-year drama that led inexorably to its grandest creation: human intelligence. The emergence in the early twenty-first century of a new form of intelligence on Earth that can compete with, and ultimately significantly exceed, human intelligence will be a development of greater import than any of the events that have created human history. It will be no less important than the creation of the intelligence that created it, and it will have profound implications for all aspects of human endeavor, including the nature of work, human learning, government, warfare, the arts, and our concept of ourselves." -Ray Kurzweil

"You don't know what you don't know." -John Anonymous-Doe

"Many have forgotten this truth, but you must not forget it. You remain responsible, forever, for what you have tamed." --Antoine de Saint-Exupery

"She was not quite what you would call refined.
She was not quite what you would call unrefined.
She was the kind of person that keeps a parrot."
~Mark Twain

"Government that's big enough to tell you what to eat . . . is government big enough to tell you with whom you can have sex." -John Stossel

"Tis true my form is something odd,
but blaming me is blaming god.
Could I create myself anew,
I would not fail in pleasing you. Was I so tall, could reach the pole,
or grasp the ocean with a span;
I would be measured by the soul.
The mind's the standard of the man." - a poem often quoted by Joseph Carey Merrick, the 'Elephant Man'

"Colour and sound do not admit of being directly compared together in any way, but both are referable to a higher formula, both are derivable, although each for itself, from this higher law. They are like two rivers which have their source in one and the same mountain, but subsequently pursue their way under totally different conditions in two totally different regions, so that throughout the whole course of both no two points can be compared. Both are general, elementary effects acting according to the general law of separation and tendency to union, of undulation and oscillation, yet acting thus in wholly differnet provinces, in different modes, on different elementary mediums, for different senses." -Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

"What you don't feel, you will not grasp by art,
Unless it wells out of your soul
And with sheer pleasure takes control,
Compelling every listener's heart.
But sit - and sit, and patch and knead,
Cook a ragout, reheat your hashes,
Blow at the sparks and try to breed
A fire out of piles of ashes!
Children and apes may think it great,
If that should titillate your gum,
But from heart to heart you will never create.
If from your heart it does not come."
-Goethe, from the Faust

Noble be man,
Helpful and good!
For that alone
Sets him apart
From every other creature
On earth.
-Goethe, 1783

"No one ever dreams of explaining chemical experiments with figures; yet it is customary in physical researches nearly allied to these, because the object is thus found to be in some degree answered. In many cases, however, such diagrams represent mere notions; they are symbolical resources, hieroglyphic modes of communication, which by degrees assume the place of the phenomena and of Nature herself, and thus hinder than promote true knowledge." -Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

"We cannot clearly be aware of what we possess till we have the means of knowing what others possessed before us. We cannot really and honestly rejoice in the advantages of our own time if we know not how to appreciate the advantages of former periods."-Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

"With light poise and counterpoise, Nature oscillates within her prescribed limits, yet thus arise all the varieties and conditions of the phenomena which are presented to us in space and time." -Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

"The completeness of nature displays itself to another sense in a similar way. Let the eye be closed, let the sense of hearing be excited, and from the lightest breath to the wildest din, from the simplest sound to the highest harmony, from the most vehement and impassioned cry to the gentlest word of reason, still it is Nature that speaks and manifests her presence, her power, her pervading life and vastness of her relations; so that a blind man to whom the infinite visible is denied, can still comprehend an infinite vitality by means of another organ. And thus as we descend the scale of being, Nature speaks to other senses - to known, misunderstood, and unknown senses: so speaks she with herself and to us in a thousand modes." -Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Ben Franklin’s 12 Rules of Management

1. Finish better than your beginnings.

2. All education is self-education.

3. Seek first to manage yourself, then to manage others.

4. Influence is more important than victory.

5. Work hard and watch your costs.

6. Everybody wants to appear reasonable.

7. Create your own set of values to guide your actions.

8. Incentive is everything.

9. Create solutions for seemingly impossible problems.

10. Become a revolutionary for experimentation and change.

11. Sometimes it’s better to do 1,001 small things right than only one large thing right.

12. Deliberately cultivate your reputation and legacy.

"I didn't write that I was an absolute pacifist but that I have always been a convinced pacifist. That means there are circumstances in which in my opinion it is necessary to use force. Such a case would be when I face an opponent whose unconditional aim is to destroy me and my people." -Albert Einstein

"It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it." -Aristotle

"When one tugs at a single thing in nature he finds it attached to the rest of the world." -John Muir

Redunancy of history!

"We have it in our power to begin the world over again.
A situation, similar to the present, hath not happened since the days of Noah until now.
The birthday of a new world is at hand." -Thomas Paine, Feb. 14, 1776

"There are more instances of the abridgment of the freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments of those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations." -James Madison

"hypocrisy is an homage that vice renders to virtue." -Francois de La Rochefoucauld

Galileo said that wine is "light held together by moisture."

"I do not doubt that in the course of time this new science will be improved by further observations, and still more by true and conclusive proofs. But this need not diminish the glory of the first observer. My regard for the inventor of the harp is not made less by knowing that his instrument was very crudely constructed and still more crudely played. Rather, I admire him more than I do the hundreds of craftsmen who in ensuing centuries have brought this art to the highest perfection... To apply oneself to great inventions, starting from the smallest beginnings, is no task for ordinary minds; to divine that wonderful arts lie hid behind trivial and childish things is a conception for superhuman talents." -Galileo Galilei, in his praise of William Gilbert's study of magnetism.

"It's not true that young people only look at consumerism and materialism. Young people want great things." -Pope Benedict XVI

"The independence created by philosophical insight is -- in my opinion -- the mark of distinction between a mere artisan or specialist and a real seeker after truth." -Albert Einstein, 1944

Jean-Jacques Rousseau

"Man is born free, but everywhere he is in chains." -Jean-Jacques Rousseau

"As soon as any man says of the affairs of the State "What does it matter to me?" the State may be given up for lost."

"Happiness: a good bank account, a good cook and a good digestion."

"The happiest is the person who suffers the least pain; the most miserable who enjoys the least pleasure."

"The strongest is never strong enough to be always the master, unless he transforms strength into right, and obedience into duty."

"May the hearts of Christians and Muslims turn to one another with feelings of brotherhood and friendship" -Pope John Paul II while visiting the Omayyad Mosque in Syria

"Even Pope John Paul II didn't do everything right. But you take a man's measure by the totality of his actions." -Bill Bennett, radio show host

"The way to be comfortable is to make others comfortable, the way to make others comfortable is to appear to love them, the way to appear to love them, is to love them in reality." -the English philosopher Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832)

"The hottest places in Hell are reserved for those who, in times of great moral crisis, maintain their neutrality." -Dante

"The state under socialism treats the individual, not with dignity, but as a molecule within the social organism, so that the good of the individual is completely subordinated to the functioning of the socioeconomic mechanism." -Pope John Paul II

"Given the increasing and menacing pressures for conformity growing up within the university, it seems reasonable to ask whether it will not be necessary for thinking men and women to return to the isolation of private life in order to be able to think freely." -Allan Bloom

"At last in an incredible manner he [Archimedes] burned up the whole Roman fleet. For by tilting a kind of mirror toward the sun he concentrated the sun's beam upon it; and owing to the thickness and smoothness of the mirror he ignited the air from this beam and kindled a great flame, the whole of which he directed upon the ships that lay at anchor in the path of the fire, until he consumed them all." -John Zonaras (circa twelfth century AD)

"When Marcellus withdrew them [his ships] a bow-shot, the old man [Archimedes] constructed a kind of hexagonal mirror, and at an interval proportionate to the size of the mirror he set similar small mirrors with four edges, moved by links and by a form of hinge, and made it the centre of the sun's beams--its noon-tide beam, whether in summer or in mid-winter. Afterwards, when the beams were reflected in the mirror, a fearful kindling of fire was raised in the ships, and at the distance of a bow-shot he turned them into ashes. In this way did the old man prevail over Marcellus with his weapons." -John Tzetzes (circa twelfth century AD)

"Why transfer what has been produced by some to others when you could spread the productivity that produced this wealth, making everyone better off? Knowledge is one of the few things that can be given to others without reducing the amount you have left." -Thomas Sowell

"There is no rational basis for saying that a human being has special rights. A rat is a pig is a dog is a boy. They're all mammals." -Ingrid Newkirk, president of PETA

"Death's the only thing you can't get out of!" -Sir Winston Churchill

"The God who gave us life, gave us liberty at the same time; the hand of force may destroy, but cannot disjoin them." -Thomas Jefferson

"At the heart of liberty is the right to define one's own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life. Beliefs about these matters could not define the attributes of personhood were they formed under compulsion of the State." -Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy

Terrorism is among them, and it is no less dangerous and cunning than fascism. -Russian President Vladimir Putin, on threats to the modern world

"Socialism in America will come through the ballot box." -Gus Hall, long time head of the Communist Party USA

"But as Alston Chase put it, 'when the search for truth is confused with political advocacy, the pursuit of knowledge is reduced to the quest for power.' That is the danger we now face. And that is why the intermixing of science and politics is a bad combination, with a bad history. We must remember the history, and be certain that what we present to the world as knowledge is disinterested and honest." -Michael Crichton, appendix to State of Fear

"When I was young, I kept women around for sex. Now, I have sex with women in order to keep them around." -Roger Price

"Error of opinion may be tolerated where reason is left free to combat it." -Thomas Jefferson

"When the government fears the People, that is Liberty. When the People fear the Government, that is tyranny." -Thomas Jefferson

"For what is liberty but the unhampered translation of will into act?" - Dante Alighieri

"God gave the prophecies, not to gratify men's curiosity by enabling them to fore know things, but that after they were fulfilled they might be interpreted by the event, and His own providence, not the interpreters, be thereby manifested to the world." -Sir Isaac Newton

"We know only one word: jihad, jihad, jihad.When we stopped the intifada, we did not stop the jihad for the establishment of a Palestinian state whose capital is Jerusalem."
Yasser Arafat - October 21,1996

"I don't know why people are surprised that France won't help us get Saddam out of Iraq. After all, France wouldn't help us get the Germans out of France." -Jay Leno

"What's the use of sending a $2 million missile into a $10 tent to hit a camel in the butt?" -George W. Bush

"If the Soviet Union let another political party come into existence, they would still be a one-party state, because everybody would join the other party." -Ronald Reagan

"A neoconservative is a liberal who was mugged by reality." -Irving Kristol

"You can fool some of the people, some of the time, but not all of the people, all of the time." -Abraham Lincoln

"The true God is a living, intelligent, and powerful Being. His duration reaches from eternity to eternity; His presence from infinity to infinity. He governs all things." -Isaac Newton

"When I had written my Treatise about our system, I had an Eye upon such Principles as might work with considering Men, for the Belief of a Deity, and nothing can rejoice me more than to find it useful for that purpose." -Isaac Newton

"I do not know what I may appear to the world; but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the seashore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, while the great ocean of truth lay all un- discovered before me." -Isaac Newton

"There are no sects in geometry. One does not speak of a Euclidean, an Archimedean. When the truth is evident, it is impossible for parties and factions to arise.... Well, to what dogma do all minds agree? To the worship of a God, and to honesty. All the philosophers of the world who have had a religion have said in all ages: "There is a God, and one must be just." There, then, is the universal religion established in all ages and throughout mankind. The point in which they all agree is therefore true, and the systems through which they differ are therefore false." -Voltaire

"It does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods or no god. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg." -Thomas Jefferson

"The day will come when the mystical generation of Jesus, by the supreme being as his father in the womb of a virgin, will be classed with the fable of the generation of Minerva in the brain of Jupiter." -Thomas Jefferson

"Here is my creed. I believe in one God, Creator of the universe. That he governs it by his providence. That he ought to be worshipped. That the most acceptable service we render to him is doing good to his other children. That the soul of Man is immortal, and will be treated with justice in another life respecting its conduct in this. These I take to be the fundamental points in all sound religion, and I regard them as you do in whatever sect I meet with them.
As for Jesus of Nazareth, my opinion of whom you particularly desire, I think his system of morals and his religion, as he left them to us, the best the world ever saw or is likely to see; but I apprehend it has received various corrupting changes, and I have, with most of the present dissenters in England, some doubts as to his divinity; though it is a question I do not dogmatize upon, having never studied it, and think it needless to busy myself with now, when I expect soon an opportunity of knowing the truth with less trouble. I see no harm, however, in its being believed, if that belief has the good consequence, as it probably has, of making his doctrines more respected and better observed, especially as I do not perceive that the Supreme takes it amiss, by distinguishing the unbelievers in his government of the world with any particular marks of his displeasure." -Benjamin Franklin, six weeks before his death at age 84.

"The true deist has but one Deity; and his religion consists in contemplating the power, wisdom, and benignity of the Deity in his works, and in endeavoring to imitate him in every thing moral, scientifical, and mechanical." -Thomas Paine

"I believe in one God, and no more; and I hope for happiness beyond this life.... I do not believe in the creed professed by the Jewish church, by the Roman church, by the Greek church, by the Turkish church, by the Protestant church, nor by any church that I know of. My own mind is my own church." -Thomas Paine

Taxpayers are conditioned to think of "research" as what is done in universities by people with government grants. Actually, research is what was done by the Wright brothers with their own money. --Dr. Thomas E. Phipps, Jr.

"We do not wage our jihad in order to replace the Western tyrant with an Arab tyrant. We fight to make God's word supreme, and anyone who stands in the way of our struggle is our enemy, a target of our swords." -Abu Musab al-Zarqawi

"Ere many generations pass, our machinery will be driven by a power obtainable at any point in the universe. This idea is not novel... We find it in the delightful myth of Antheus, who derives power from the earth; we find it among the subtle speculations of one of your splendid mathematicians... Throughout space there is energy. Is this energy static or kinetic? If static our hopes are in vain; if kinetic - and this we know it is, for certain - then it is a mere question of time when men will succeed in attaching their machinery to the very wheelwork of nature." -Nikola Tesla, addressing the American Institute of Electrical Engineers, 1891

"Conflict is always the consequence of forced behavior modification, whether it is attempted between two individuals, or among nations. Peace is the result of mutual respect, through which the inherent rights of all people are honored." -Henry Lamb

"Verily never will Allah change the condition of a people until they change it themselves." -The Koran

"To the corruptions of Christianity I am, indeed, opposed; but not to the genuine precepts of Jesus himself. I am a Christian, in the only sense in which he wished any one to be; sincerely attached to his doctrines, in preference to all others; ascribing to himself every human excellence; and believing he never claimed any other." -Thomas Jefferson

"The most beautiful of all emblems is that of God, whom Timaeus of Locris describes under the image of 'A circle whose center is everywhere and circumference nowhere.'" -Voltaire

"If the gods listened to the prayers of men, all humankind would quickly perish since they constantly pray for many evils to befall one another."

"It is impossible for the one who instills fear to remain free from fear." -Epicurus

"I maintain that the cosmic religious feeling is the strongest and noblest motive for scientific research."

"Whatever there is of God and goodness in the universe, it must work itself out and express itself through us. We cannot stand aside and let God do it." -Albert Einstein

"The greatest of man's spiritual needs is the need to be delivered from the evil and falsity that are in himself and in his society."

"It is beneath human dignity to lose one's individuality and become a mere cog in the machine."

"Mankind has to get out of violence only through nonviolence."

"True nonviolence is an impossibility without the possession of unadulterated fearlessness."

"Silence becomes cowardice when occasion demands speaking out the whole truth and acting accordingly."

"Strength in numbers is the delight of the timid. The valiant in spirit glory in fighting alone."

"I believe in God, not as a theory but as a fact more real than that of life itself."
-Gandhi

"There are many who are living far below their possibilities because they are continually handing over their individualities to others. Do you want to be a power in the world? Then be yourself. Be true to the highest within your soul and then allow yourself to be governed by no customs or conventionalities or arbitrary man-made rules that are not founded on principle." -Ralph Waldo Emerson

"We live very close together. So, our prime purpose in this life is to help others. And if you can't help them, at least don't hurt them." -Tenzin Gyatso, commonly known as The Dalai Lama

"One of the best ways to properly evaluate and adapt to the many environmental stresses of life is to simply view them as normal. The adversity and failures in our lives, if adapted to and viewed as normal corrective feedback to use to get back on target, serve to develop in us an immunity against anxiety, depression, and the adverse responses to stress. Instead of tackling the most important priorities that would make us successful and effective in life, we prefer the path of least resistance and do things simply that will relieve our tension, such as shuffling papers and majoring in minors." -Denis Waitley

"Have no fear of perfection - you'll never reach it." -Salvador Dali

"The superior man thinks always of virtue; the common man thinks of comfort." -Confucius

"Many persons have a wrong idea of what constitutes true happiness. It is not attained through self-gratification but through fidelity to a worthy purpose." -Helen Keller

"Results! Why, man, I have gotten a lot of results. I know several thousand things that won't work." Thomas A. Edison

"The creation is the Bible of the Deist. He there reads, in the handwriting of the Creator himself, the certainty of His existence and the immutability of His power, and all other Bibles and Testaments are to him forgeries." -Thomas Paine

"I would rather be a superb meteor, every atom of me in magnificent glow, than a sleepy permanent planet. The proper function of man is to live, not to exist. I shall not waste my days in trying to prolong them. I shall use my time." Jack London

". . . in life generally, the contemplation and study of Nature are far superior to the whole range of other human activities."

"The deepest knowledge and contemplation of Nature is but a very lame and imperfect business, unless it proceed and tend forward into action."

"An acute first-class brain is the finest asset anyone can have- and, if we want to be happy, it is an asset we must exploit to the uttermost." Cicero

"What ever you do, or dream you can do, begin it! Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it." -Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Tidbits from the Koran, Islam's Holy Book

"Fight those who do not believe in Allah, nor in the latter day, nor do they prohibit what Allah and His Apostle have prohibited, nor follow the religion of truth, out of those who have been given the Book, until they pay the tax in acknowledgment of superiority and they are in a state of subjection." -Surah 9:29

"Men are the maintainers of women because Allah has made some of them to excel others and because they spend out of their property; the good women are therefore obedient, guarding the unseen as Allah has guarded; and (as to) those on whose part you fear desertion, admonish them, and leave them alone in the sleeping-places and beat them; then if they obey you, do not seek a way against them; surely Allah is High, Great." -Surah 4:34

"The punishment of those who wage war against Allah and His apostle and strive to make mischief in the land is only this, that they should be murdered or crucified or their hands and their feet should be cut off on opposite sides or they should be imprisoned; this shall be as a disgrace for them in this world, and in the hereafter they shall have a grievous chastisement." -Surah 5:33

Perpetual devotion to what a man calls his business is only to be sustained by perpetual neglect of many other things. — Robert Louis Stevenson

"Happy are the men, and happy the people who grow wise by the misfortunes of others." -John Dickinson

"It is a certain fact that not all Muslims are terrorists, but it is equally certain, and exceptionally painful, that almost all terrorists are Muslims." -Abdel Rahman al-Rashed, general manager of the influential Al Arabiya television station, after the Beslan, Russia, attack

"When the sacred minds eye unifies in balance with the heart, the universe of knowing opens. The Eagle Nations, Bear Nations, Tree Nations, Star Nations and other carriers of sacred truth will gather within your circle, each carrying their pillar of light. At your request, each will take you by the arm and illuminate your path as you journey the Earthmother." -Bearcloud

"Geometry is frozen music." -Pythagoras

"It is possible, and even probable, that there will be, in time, other resources of energy opened up, of which we have no knowledge now. We may even find ways of applying forces such as magnetism or gravity for driving machinery without using any other means. Such realizations, though highly improbable, are not impossible." -Nikola Tesla

"I have, by every thought and every act of mine, demonstrated, and do so daily, to my absolute satisfaction, that I am an automaton endowed with power of movement, which merely responds to external stimuli beating upon my sense organs, and thinks and acts and moves accordingly." -Nikola Tesla

"The superstitious belief of the ancients, if it existed at all, can therefore not be taken as a reliable proof of their ignorance, but just how much they knew about electricity can only be conjectured. A curious fact is that the ray or torpedo fish, was used by them in electro-therapy. Some old coins show twin stars, or sparks, such as might be produced by a galvanic battery. The records, though scanty, are of a nature to fill us with conviction that a few initiated, at least, had a deeper knowledge of amber-phenomena. To mention one, Moses was undoubtedly a practical and skillful electrician far in advance of his time. The Bible describes precisely and minutely arrangements constituting a machine in which electricity was generated by friction of air against silk curtains and stored in a box constructed like a condenser. It is very plausible to assume that the sons of Aaron were killed by a high tension discharge and that the vestal fires of the Romans were electrical...That many facts in regard to the subtle force were known to the philosophers of old can be safely concluded, the wonder is, why two thousand years elapsed before [William] Gilbert in 1600 published his famous work, the first scientific treatise on electricity and magnetism. " -Nikola Tesla, 1915

"It is by abolishing all the barriers which separate nations and countries that civilization is best furthered."

"Again, it is contended by some that the advent of the flying-machine must bring on universal peace. This, too, I believe to be an entirely erroneous view. The flying-machine is certainly coming, and very soon, but the conditions will remain the same as before. In fact, I see no reason why a ruling power, like Great Britain, might not govern the air as well as the sea. Without wishing to put myself on record as a prophet, I do not hesitate to say that the next years will see the establishment of an "air-power," and its center may be not far from New York. But, for all that, men will fight on merrily." this comment was made in 1900!

"The ideal development of the war principle would ultimately lead to the transformation of the whole energy of war into purely potential, explosive energy, like that of an electrical condenser. In this form the war-energy could be maintained without effort; it would need to be much smaller in amount, while incomparably more effective."

-Nikola Tesla

"I anticipate that any, unprepared for these results [his experiments on wireless transmission of electricity over great distances], which, through long familiarity, appear to me simple and obvious, will consider them still far from practical application. Such reserve, and even opposition, of some is as useful a quality and as necessary an element in human progress as the quick receptivity and enthusiasm of others. Thus, a mass which resists the force at first, once set in movement, adds to the energy. The scientific man does not aim at an immediate result. He does not expect that his advanced ideas will be readily taken up. His work is like that of the planter—for the future. His duty is to lay the foundation for those who are to come, and point the way." -Nikola Tesla

"It is by abolishing all the barriers which separate nations and countries that civilization is best furthered." -Nikola Tesla

"Democracy is the most vile form of government ... democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention, have ever been found incompatible with personal security or the rights of property, and have in general been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their deaths." -James Madison

"Whisky, wine, tea coffee, tobacco, and other such stimulants are responsible for the shortening of the lives of many, and ought to be used with moderation. But I do not think that rigorous measures of suppression of habits followed through many generations are commendable. It is wiser to preach moderation than abstinence. We have become accustomed to these stimulants, and if such reforms are to be effected, they must be slow and gradual. Those who are devoting their energies to such ends could make themselves far more useful by turning their efforts in other directions, as, for instance, toward providing pure water.

For every person who perishes from the effects of a stimulant, at least a thousand die from the consequences of drinking impure water. This precious fluid, which daily infuses new life into us, is likewise the chief vehicle through which disease and death enter our bodies." -Nikola Tesla

"Empty vacuum - pure "emptiness", so to speak - is filled with rivers and oceans of seething energy, just as Nikola Tesla pointed out. It is running off the fact that vacuum space-time itself is nothing but pure massless charge. That is, vacuum has a very high electrostatic scalar potential - it is greatly stressed. To usefully tap the enormous locked-in energy of that stress, all one has to do is crack it sharply and tap the vacuum oscillations that result. The best way to do that is to hit something resonant that is imbedded in the vacuum, then tap the resonant stress of the ringing of the vacuum itself .In other words, we can ring something at its resonant frequency and, if that something is imbedded in the vacuum, we can tap off the resonance in vacuum stress, without tapping energy directly from the embedded system we rang into oscillation, So what we really need is something that is deeply imbedded in the vacuum, that is, something that can translate "vacuum" movement to "mass" movement." John Bodini

"Our electrical company tells us that the only two practical choices for their power are coal or nuclear. There is another alternative." Wingate Lambertson, Inventor

"When we speak of man, we have a conception of humanity as a whole, and before applying scientific methods to, the investigation of his movement we must accept this as a physical fact. But can anyone doubt to-day that all the millions of individuals and all the innumerable types and characters constitute an entity, a unit? Though free to think and act, we are held together, like the stars in the firmament, with ties inseparable. These ties cannot be seen, but we can feel them. I cut myself in the finger, and it pains me: this finger is a part of me. I see a friend hurt, and it hurts me, too: my friend and I are one. And now I see stricken down an enemy, a lump of matter which, of all the lumps of matter in the universe, I care least for, and it still grieves me. Does this not prove that each of us is only part of a whole?

For ages this idea has been proclaimed in the consummately wise teachings of religion, probably not alone as a means of insuring peace and harmony among men, but as a deeply founded truth. The Buddhist expresses it in one way, the Christian in another, but both say the same: We are all one. Metaphysical proofs are, however, not the only ones which we are able to bring forth in support of this idea. Science, too, recognizes this connectedness of separate individuals, though not quite in the same sense as it admits that the suns, planets, and moons of a constellation are one body, and there can be no doubt that it will be experimentally confirmed in times to come, when our means and methods for investigating psychical and other states and phenomena shall have been brought to great perfection. Still more: this one human being lives on and on. The individual is ephemeral, races and nations come and pass away, but man remains." -Nikola Tesla

A universal beauty showed its face;
The invisible deep-fraught significances,
Here sheltered behind form's insensible screen
Uncovered to him their deathless harmony
And the key to the wonder-book of common things.
In their uniting law stood up revealed
The multiple measures of the uplifting force,
The lines of the World-Geometer's technique,
The enchantments that uphold the cosmic web
And the magic underlying simple shapes.
-by Sri Aurobindo Ghose, Indian spiritual guide/poet 1872-1950

"When the government fears the people, there is liberty. When the people fear the government, there is tyranny!" -Thomas Jefferson

Nurture your mind with great thoughts -Benjamin Disraeli

"A penny saved is a penny earned" -Benjamin Franklin, the only Founding Father to sign all of this nation's organizational documents, who played a major role in the design of the Great Seal of the United States, who designed the first American coin, and who will appear on $1 U.S. silver coins in 2005. There will be two versions: one showing his younger image, the other his older profile.

"If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams and endeavors to live the life which he had imagined, he will meet success unexpected in common hours." -Thoreau

"Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom, must, like men, undergo the fatigues of supporting it." -Thomas Paine

What the Bleep Do We Know!? - The Movie: Quotes

What the Bleep Do We Know!? - The Movie: Quotes Several good quotes from that page:

The truth is incontrovertible. Malice may attack it, ignorance may deride it, but in the end, there it is.
- Winston Churchill

Words ought to be a little wild, for they are the assaults of thoughts on the unthinking.
- John Maynard Keynes

All great truths begin as blasphemies.
- George Bernard Shaw

Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind.
- Albert Einstein

When I despair, I remember that all through history the ways of truth and love have always won. There have been tyrants, and murderers, and for a time they can seem invincible, but in the end they always fall. Think of it ? always.
- Mahatma Gandhi

To confine our attention to terrestrial matters would be to limit the human spirit.
- Stephen W. Hawking

The visible world is the invisible organization of energy.
- Physicist Heinz Pagels

If quantum mechanics hasn't profoundly shocked you, you haven't understood it yet.
- Niels Bohr

If those who lead you say to you, "See, the Kingdom is in the sky," then the birds of the sky will precede you. If they say to you, "It is in the sea," then the fish will precede you. Rather, the Kingdom is inside of you, and it is outside of you. When you come to know yourselves, then you will become known, and you will realize that it is you who are the sons of the living Father. But if you will not know yourselves, you dwell in poverty and it is you who are that poverty.
- (All the sayings of Jesus gathered from ancient sources and compiled into a single volume for the first time. Compiled by Ricky Alan Mayotte) From The Complete Jesus. (Pg 71)

To know that we know what we know, and to know that we do not know what we do not know, that is true knowledge.
- Copernicus


Few people are capable of expressing with equanimity opinions which differ from the prejudices of their social environment. Most people are even incapable of forming such opinions.
- Albert Einstein

Whoever talks about Planck's constant and does not feel at least a little giddy obviously doesn't appreciate what he is talking about.
- Niels Bohr

The opposite of a fact is falsehood, but the opposite of one profound truth may very well be another profound truth.
- Niels Bohr

The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mystical. It is the source of all true art and science.
- Albert Einstein

Not only does God play dice, but... he sometimes throws them where they cannot be seen.
- Stephen W. Hawking

Do you remember how electrical currents and "unseen waves" were laughed at? The knowledge about man is still in its infancy.
- Albert Einstein

It gives me a deep comforting sense that ?things seen are temporal and things unseen are eternal.?
- Helen Keller

As far as we can discern, the sole purpose of existence is to kindle a light in the darkness of being.
- Carl Jung

Time is not a line, but a series of now points.
- Taisen Deshimaru

Go confidently in the direction of your dreams! Live the life you've imagined. As you simplify your life, the law of the universe will be simpler.
- H.D. Thoreau

I can see, and that is why I can be happy, in what you call the dark, but which to me is golden. I can see a God-made world, not a manmade world.
- Helen Keller

The gift of fantasy has meant more to me than my talent for absorbing knowledge.
- Albert Einstein

Man will occasionally stumble over the truth, but usually manages to pick himself up, walk over or around it, and carry on.
- Winston Churchill

Perhaps in time the so-called Dark Ages will be thought of as including our own.
- Georg C. Lichtenberg

Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity...and I'm not sure about the universe.
- Albert Einstein

...perhaps there is a pattern set up in the heavens for one who desires to see it, and having seen it, to find one in himself.
- Plato

The truth dazzles gradually, or else the world would be blind.
- Emily Dickinson

A man of genius makes no mistakes. His errors are volitional and are the portals of discovery.
- James Joyce, Ulysses

I have yet to meet a single person from our culture, no matter what his or her educational background, IQ, and specific training, who had powerful transpersonal experiences and continues to subscribe to the materialistic monism of Western science.
- Albert Einstein

A hundred times every day I remind myself that my inner and outer life depend upon the labors of other men, living and dead, and that I must exert myself in order to give in the measure as I have received and am still receiving.
- Albert Einstein

The significant problems we face cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them.
- Albert Einstein

Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that. Hate multiplies hate, violence multiplies violence, and toughness multiplies toughness, in a descending spiral of destruction. The chain reaction of evil must be broken, or we shall be plunged into the dark abyss of annihilation.
- Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

He who joyfully marches in rank and file has already earned my contempt. He has been given a large brain by mistake, since for him the spinal cord would suffice.
- Albert Einstein

I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use.
- Galileo Galilei

"The world is a tragedy to those who feel, and comedy to those who think." -William Shakespeare

"Politics and morality are inseparable. And as morality's foundation is religion, religion and politics are necessarily related. We need religion as a guide. We need it because we are imperfect, and our government needs the church, because only those humble enough to admit they're sinners can bring to democracy the tolerance it requires in order to survive." -Ronald Reagan

"Never in the history of the world has any soldier sacrificed more for the freedom and liberty of total strangers than the American soldier. And, our soldiers don't just give freedom abroad; they preserve it for us here at home.
For it has been said so truthfully that it is the soldier, not the reporter, who has given us the freedom of the press. It is the soldier, not the poet, who has given us freedom of speech.
It is the soldier, not the agitator, who has given us the freedom to protest.
It is the soldier who salutes the flag, serves beneath the flag, whose coffin is draped by the flag, who gives that protester the freedom to abuse and burn that flag." -Senator Zell Miller (D)-Ga.

Secession talk

"You know what? Just let me make one point. You were talking about the map before. If indeed all those blue states all got together and seceded from the union, think what would be left for those red states, nothing. There would be no educational system. You would have nothing. What would be left to you? I mean, where is all of this talent in this country? It's on both sides, the Northeast corridor." -Geraldine Ferraro, former vice presidential candidate. It was Democrats who seceded the last time from America, in 1861. They were in full righteous fury defending the morality of slavery.

"My views...are the result of a lifetime of inquiry and reflection, and very different from the anti-Christian system imputed to me by those who know nothing of my opinions. To the corruptions of Christianity I am, indeed, opposed; but not to the genuine precepts of Jesus himself. I am a Christian in the only sense in which He wished any one to be; sincerely attached to his doctrines in preference to all others." -Thomas Jefferson


"It is rightly impossible to govern the world without God and the Bible." -George Washington

"Can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are of the gift of God?" -Thomas Jefferson

"Too often we're caricatured as a bicoastal cultural elite that is condescending at best and contemptuous at worst to the values that Americans hold in their daily lives." -Senator Evan Bayh D-Ind., commenting about why the Democrats lost the election Note: He is often named as a possible contender for the Democratic nomation for President in 2008.

"The release of atom power has changed everything except our way of thinking... the solution to this problem lies in the heart of mankind. If only I had known, I should have become a watchmaker." -Albert Einstein

"Security is like air. You never think about it when you have it, but when it is gone, it is the only thing that matters." -Ashton Carter, an assistant secretary of defense in the Clinton administration

"The will of God prevails. In great contests each party claims to be acting in accordance with the will of God. Both may be, and one must be, wrong. God cannot be for and against the same thing at the same time." -Abraham Lincoln

"I must study politics and war that my sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy. My sons ought to study mathematics and philosophy, geography, natural history, naval architecture, navigation, commerce, and agriculture, in order to give their children a right to study painting, poetry, music, architecture, statuary, tapestry, and porcelain." -John Adams, in a letter to his wife Abigail

"War is an ugly thing but not the ugliest of things; the decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feelings which thinks that nothing is worth war is much worse. A man who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself." -John Stuart Mill

"Sometimes party loyalty asks too much" -John F. Kennedy

The Creaor, God.

"[The world] has been built for us by the Best and Most Orderly Workman of all." -Nicolaus Copernicus

"God is known ... by Nature in His works and by doctrine in His revealed word." -Galileo Galilei

"The more I study nature, the more I stand amazed at the work of the Creator." -Louis Pasteur

"All human evil comes from a single cause, man's inability to sit still in a room." -Blaise Pascal

"When I look at the solar system, I see the earth at the right distance from the sun to receive the proper amounts of heat and light. This did not happen by chance." -Isaac Newton

"Men must be governed by God or they will be ruled by tyrants." -William Penn

Unknown source of quote

"democracy is a device that ensures that we are never governed better than we deserve" -Unknown (anyone know who said this?)

"Civilization is the distance man puts between himself and his own excreta." -Brian Aldiss

“I am concerned for the security of our great nation, not so much because of any threat from without, but because of the insidious forces working from within.” -General Douglas MacArthur

"The real rulers in Washington are invisible and exercise power from behind the scenes." -Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter,1952

"Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety." -Benjamin Franklin

"There is always evidence but maybe not enough to convince an O.J. jury," -Ann Coulter

Deaf and Dumb?

"He who has never had anything has never lost anything; and he who never lost anything has nothing to regret. Consequently, the deaf and dumb, who have never heard or spoke, have never lost either hearing or speech, therefore cannot lament either the one or the other." -Laurent Clerc (Thanks, Oscar!)

Michael "Benedict Arnold" Moore

"Sleep till noon, drink beer, vote for Kerry Nov. 2" -Michael Moore

Motivators

"When we remember we are all mad, the mysteries of life disappear and life stands explained." -Mark Twain

"Most of the important things in the world have been accomplished by people who have kept on trying when there seemed to be no help at all." -Dale Carnegie

"The mind is its own place, and in itself, can make heaven of hell or a hell of heaven." -John Milton

"The only way to discover the limits of the possible is to go beyond them into the impossible." -Arthur C. Clarke

"Man's mind stretched to a new idea never goes back to its original dimensions." -Oliver Wendell Holmes

"Every child is an artist. The challenge is to remain an artist once he grows up." -Pablo Picasso

"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." -Arthur C. Clarke

"A scientist will never show any kindness for a theory which he did not start himself." -Mark Twain

Peace & War

"Si vis Pacem, Para Bellum (to maintain peace, prepare for war)" -Ronald Reagan

"To be prepared for war, is one of the most effectual means of preserving peace." -George Washington

"If you hold your fire until you see the whites of his eyes, you will never know what hit you." -Franklin Delano Roosevelt

"Those who ignore history are doomed to repeat it." --George Santayana

"KGB priority number one at that time was to damage American power, judgment and credibility. ... As a spy chief and a general in the former Soviet satellite of Romania, I produced the very same vitriol Kerry repeated to the U.S. Congress almost word for word and planted it in leftist movements. KGB chairman Yuri Andropov managed our anti-Vietnam War operation. He often bragged about having damaged the U.S. foreign-policy consensus, poisoned domestic debate in the U.S., and built a credibility gap between America and European public opinion through our disinformation operations. Vietnam was, he once told me, 'our most significant success'" -Ion Mihai Pacepa, the highest-ranking intelligence officer ever to defect from the Soviet bloc, commenting about Kerry's anti-American activities during the Vietnam War.

"Guard against the impostures of pretended patriotism." -George Washington

"If not for the disunity created by such stateside protesters, Hanoi would have ultimately surrendered." -North Vietnamese General Vo Nguyen Giap

"It is better by noble boldness to run the risk of being subject to half the evils we anticipate than to remain in cowardly listlessness for fear of what might happen." --Herodotus

"If we are to be completely honest with ourselves, we must admit that there is risk in any course we take." -FDR

"Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's character, give him power." -Abraham Lincoln

"Perpetual peace is a futile dream." -Gen. George S. Patton

"Nobody knows when total victory will come" -FDR

"Through centuries of struggle, Jews across the world have been witnesses not only against the crimes of men, but for faith in God, and God alone. Theirs is a story of defiance in oppression and patience in tribulation, reaching back to the Exodus and their exile into the Diaspora. That story continued in the founding of the state of Israel. The story continues in the defense of the state of Israel." -George W. Bush

"The world watches for weakness in our resolve. "They will see no weakness. We will answer every challenge ... America is on the offensive, and we will stay on the offensive until the terrorists are stopped and our people are safe." -George W. Bush

"Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe to assure the survival and the success of liberty." -John F. Kennedy

"The American people will never stop to reckon the cost of redeeming civilization."
-Franklin D. Roosevelt

"I committed the same kind of atrocities as thousands of other soldiers have committed in that I took part in shootings in free fire zones. I conducted harassment and interdiction fire. I used 50-caliber machine guns, which we were granted and ordered to use, which were our only weapon against people. I took part in search-and-destroy missions, in the burning of villages." John F. Kerry admitting to war crimes, during his congressional testimony in 1971.

"I hope we shall take warning from the example and crush in it's birth the aristocracy of our monied corporations which dare already to challenge our government to a trial of strength and bid defiance to the laws our country." -Thomas Jefferson

"They [Americans] are possibly the dumbest people on the planet ... in thrall to conniving, thieving, smug pricks." -Michael Moore